Jesus Freaks

by Don Lattin

  Secrets are hard to keep in The Family. Karen Zerby had spies everywhere and soon learned that her son was spending too much time with his latest lover.

  “Karen liked people to have sex with as many people as possible,” Elixcia said. “That kind of detaches you from one person and makes you more part of the whole group. That way you don’t have selective relationships.”

  Ricky and Elixcia seemed to have other plans.

  They moved from Hungary to Zerby’s secret compound at a large beach house outside Lisbon. It was now early 1997. Controversy surrounding child sexual abuse in The Family had prompted a new set of rules about sexual relationships for anyone under eighteen. Ricky was over twenty-one and Elixcia would not turn eighteen until April 4, 1997. They were not supposed to have sex until her birthday, even though they had been sexually involved since 1994, just a few days after Ricky left that single red rose on Elixcia’s pillow.

  “Karen knew we were dating in Hungary. Everyone knew. We just supposedly weren’t having sex. We would sleep together. I’d crawl into his bed in the boy’s dorm. We were always together. We’d eat together. Watch movies together. We were always sitting next to each other in meetings,” Elixcia said. “Everyone knew about our relationship in Hungary and knew Ricky was off-limits. Girls still asked to date him. I had to let them date him because it was part of our policy, and we didn’t want people to know we were having sex.”

  As soon as Elixcia turned eighteen, the couple no longer had to pretend their relationship was platonic. Ricky’s mother grudgingly allowed them to stay together, but saw her control over her only son was slipping away. “Karen really struggled with us,” Elixcia said. “We’d come to meetings and sit in the very back and be cuddling the whole time—almost disrupting things at times.”

  There wasn’t much Zerby could do. Ricky was now an adult. He was twenty-two years old—the same age his mother was when she joined up with The Family back in Tucson in 1969.

  11

  Loving Jesus

  VANCOUVER, CANADA

  October 1996 – World Services Publication Unit

  David Brandt Berg, 1919–1994.

  NOTHING TESTS A NEW religious movement like the death of its founder.

  David Berg died sometime in 1994, at the age of seventy-five, leaving Karen Zerby and Peter Amsterdam firmly in control of Family missionaries around the world. Merry Berg, the shattered granddaughter of the Endtime Prophet, had gone public with the story about her physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the Philippines in the eighties. Under pressure from the British court and Lord Justice Alan Ward, Zerby and Amsterdam publicly acknowledged that their spiritual leader created an atmosphere in The Family that allowed the sexual abuse of children. They promised they would never let that happened again.

  We do not consider it right or good, we do not think or speak favorably of, nor do we officially [or unofficially] consent to, confirm or sanction sex with minors. As a result of this fact, I reject, disown, abandon and give up by open profession every single writing of any person in The Family which may appear to approve of it. Without condition or limitation, we command The Family not to indulge in sex with minors.1

  Family leaders never released an exact date or cause of Berg’s death, but the Endtime Prophet was apparently flown from British Columbia to Portugal toward the end of his life. He died at Costa da Caparica, a beach resort near Lisbon. Some believe Berg died of alcoholism, but the prophet himself denied that charge in a message sent from the grave. Speaking through Zerby, the spirit of David Berg admitted he was once an alcoholic, but said the disease is not what killed him.

  I did not die a premature death from having been an alcoholic. I died because it was my time to come home to be with Jesus. I let go and gave up the ghost because the Lord showed me that Mama [Zerby] was ready to carry on without me, which has certainly been true. Isn’t she doing great! I could die—although it’s really passing from death to life—because I knew The Family would be able to carry on without me, and you folks are doing great, too.

  Alcohol had nothing to do with my death. I died in my sleep and had a wonderful homecoming, and drinking played no part in hastening my death. In fact, I lived years longer than I ever expected.2

  Whatever the cause, some veteran members of The Family thought Berg’s death could set the stage for better times in the movement. There was a new charter designed to give members more rights, freedom, and protection from authoritarian leaders. The Family survived the police raids in Australia, Argentina, and at other colonies around the world.

  Many of those raids were an overreaction based on agitation by defectors who used incriminating documents from the seventies and eighties to convince authorities that child abuse was widespread and continuing in the nineties. It was not. The situation had changed for younger children in The Family. Nevertheless, scores of children were taken from their homes and put in protective custody. Few, if any, child abuse convictions resulted from those raids. It was easy for Family leaders to condemn the raids as acts of religious persecution—further evidence that the Systemites could not be trusted and the Endtime would soon be upon them.

  James Penn, the longtime operative destined to play a key role in the Ricky Rodriguez saga, had almost persuaded himself that something righteous and worthwhile could come out of the movement he had helped shepherd for twenty-five years. “James Penn” is the pen name of a Family devotee known over the years as Gideon Valor, Felipe, Jay, Ray, and Phil. He had joined another Jesus people group in Vancouver in the fall of 1970 and became a member of The Family in the summer of 1971. Penn spent years working in World Services and the Unit on various continents and through various stages of the craziness.

  “Looking back, I think that the only way I managed to cope with all of Mo, Maria, and Peter’s ‘high weirdness’ was by subconsciously ‘compartmentalizing’ my mind. I knew Mo, Maria, and Peter [meaning Berg, Zerby, and Amsterdam] were responsible for the abuse of many children in The Family. Yet I still had some sort of fundamental faith in them and in the good that many Family members were doing. I hoped for a better future. If The Family could just win these persecution-related battles, I reasoned, then as an organization, we could reform and purge the excess. Hopes of a brighter tomorrow kept me going.”3

  Penn’s optimism was short-lived. Within a year of the founder’s death, Zerby received a series of bizarre prophecies from Jesus and from the spirit of Berg. Other voices of the dead came forth—including those of Genghis Khan, Jerry Garcia, and River Phoenix. Perhaps the highlight of that period was the time that Art Linkletter spoke from the grave to a member of Zerby’s staff. That communication was particularly miraculous since it turned out that Art Linkletter was still alive.

  As a member of the research division of World Services, Penn was among those called upon to translate the latest “doctrinal weirdness” coming from Zerby and Amsterdam. For him and several other longtime members on the edge of leaving, the “Loving Jesus” revelation of 1995 and the “Marriage of the Generations” campaign the following year showed The Family had not changed all that much. “While The Family disavowed flirty fishing and cracked down on sex between adults and minors, it never renounced the Law of Love—one of the doctrines that most separates The Family from the rest of Christendom. Karen Zerby was obsessed with getting Family members to be sexually active,” Penn explains.

  “Lots of sex with multiple partners is good. Monogamous relationships are bad. In any discussion on the Law of Love, she will insist that sex is not the primary issue. But when the dust settles, you’re expected to have lots of sex! In addition to promoting the Law of Love, [Zerby] was eager to introduce the ‘Marriage of the Generations,’ which encouraged young Family adults to have sex with Family members of their parents’ generation. Maria hoped that this would help break down the barriers between the two generations.”

  “Marriage of the Generations” was introduced as a pilot project at a 1996 Family leadership summit in Maryland a
nd presented to the larger Family two years later. Zerby and Amsterdam were on a crusade to convince twenty-one-year-old girls to get over any problems they might have with sex with men old enough to be their fathers. Family publications called on members to “more fully live the Law of Love.”

  Penn was at the tipping point.

  “Once again, they were deliberately, systematically creating an over-sexualized atmosphere in Family homes…. Even if this time around, no children were directly involved, what is young Susie supposed to think when she can’t find mommy because mommy is off servicing some man? You can’t hide these things in a home. Children inadvertently see things they shouldn’t see.”

  Then there was “Loving Jesus!” In this revelation, Jesus told Zerby that it would be wonderful if his followers would masturbate while praying to him. Some selections:

  “As a bride learns the ways of love and the ways to please her husband, so much My children learn of the ways to please and to love Me.

  “We shall have a great feast and we shall have great love, and we shall have a great, great, great big orgy together! This is My call to all the young virgins: Come unto Me. I want to marry you. I want you in the bed of My love….

  “So I’m coming. And it’s coming! And you’ll be coming! And we’ll all be loving together….”4

  Speaking through Zerby, Jesus anticipated that this new revelation would just cause more controversy for The Family.

  “The world and the church are going to stand back in awe, and they are going to scoff and say, ‘The children haven’t changed!’ But I say unto you, the children have changed, because they are no longer children, they are brides! They are going to be experienced lovers, and they are going to revel in the ecstasies of My love.”

  After hearing from Jesus, Karen Zerby could only say, “Wow! How sexy!”

  “God is anything but conservative! He’s radical and He doesn’t seem to care if people know He’s wild and free!” Zerby says at the end of her letter to the flock. “May God bless you and help you to spend good loving time with Him—time in His Word, praising Him, telling him you love Him and letting Him fuck you with His Word!”5

  David Millikan, the Australian clergyman and Family sympathizer, remembers asking Peter Amsterdam about the Loving Jesus revelation. Millikan thought The Family would clean up its act after Berg died. He was puzzled. “Amsterdam told me The Family was in danger of becoming too conservative. He said the thing that gave them their edge was the sexual openness. If they turn away from that, what do they have to make them unique?”6

  Zerby and Amsterdam’s campaign to impose the Loving Jesus teaching on members of The Family—including teenage members—was a revelation for James Penn. He could no longer live in The Family and live with himself. He left the fold and explained why in a February 2000 manifesto entitled “No Regrets.” It was posted on the Internet and became a rallying cry for disillusioned members of the second generation. It had a major influence on Ricky’s decision to leave The Family.

  Penn describes how he became increasingly upset at Zerby’s attempts to indoctrinate the second generation. “For many years, most of us assumed that our children would follow in our footsteps, and we did everything we could to facilitate it. We did not view our children as individuals who would find their own way in life, but rather as disciples of the future.

  “As the years passed and the children grew up, some began to leave The Family. At first, most of us were shocked. How could these kids turn their back on God and all the godly training that we had poured into them? Nevertheless, many Family members gradually came to accept that not every child born of Family members was going to remain in The Family. Each child would eventually have to make a personal choice as to what he or she wanted to do with his or her life.”

  Ricky was about to make his choice.

  12

  Moving On

  DULZURA, CALIFORNIA

  March 2000 – Family Care Foundation

  Ricky Rodriguez and Davida Kelley.

  RICKY WAS LIVING at The Family Care Foundation headquarters in southern California when he first announced he was leaving The Family. The foundation’s offices are at Brookside Farm, a four-acre spread along Marron Valley Road in Dulzura, a small town east of San Diego. The wooded compound consists of several buildings and a collection of small trailers and RVs surrounded by a stone wall. There’s a swimming pool, a small overgrown vineyard, a large trampoline, and a sign warning, “Caution: Children at Play.” Two peacocks and a donkey share the grounds.

  James Penn had just issued his “No Regrets” manifesto. Ricky had been hanging around Brookside Farm, living in the basement of the main building, keeping quiet, and working on getting his driver’s license, getting ready to make his move.

  Other staff members at the foundation spent their days processing donations, reading Family bulletins, and performing religious devotions. “It was kind of like working at a nonprofit, except that you were living in this cultist environment,” said former foundation accountant Jonathan Thompson.1

  Despite Family claims to the contrary, Internal Revenue Service documents filed by The Family Care Foundation show deep ties between the organization and The Family International. Those documents and annual reports from 1997 to 2003 reveal that the foundation raised more than $9.9 million in donations including cash and other gifts for projects around the world—such as assisting orphans, educational programs, and disaster relief.

  Penn, who spent more than a decade in the inner circle of The Family, describes the foundation as a public front enabling The Family to attract tax-deductible donations from people who would never endorse the cult’s “bizarre beliefs and practices.”

  “People wouldn’t give to a charitable foundation if they knew that its leaders endorsed the sexual abuse of minors and religious prostitution,” said Penn, who helped start the foundation before leaving The Family in 1998.2

  One of the larger donors was the Flora Family Foundation, which gave the San Diego charity $61,500. Stephen Toben, president of the Flora Family Foundation, said his organization was unaware of any connection between the San Diego charity and The Family. Toben’s foundation, established by the family of Hewlett Packard cofounder William Hewlett and his wife, Flora, learned about the charity while searching on the Internet for groups working on international development projects.

  Another source of income for The Family Care Foundation were donations made through the U.S. government’s Combined Federal Campaign, which allows federal employees to deduct money from their paychecks for approved charities. An official with the program, which is run by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, said the campaign did not keep statistics on how much money it funneled to individual charities. In 2003, the campaign raised $250 million for 15,000 participating charities.

  Larry Corley, executive director of The Family Care Foundation, said his organization uses donations to fund many “independent projects around the world.”

  “It is not a front for The Family. It is not tied to The Family,” Corley insisted. “There is no relationship, period.”3

  But former members say The Family runs the vast majority of projects funded by the foundation. On top of that, all six officers listed on Internal Revenue Service documents filed by the foundation in 2004 had ties to The Family.

  One of them was Angela Smith, a.k.a. Sue Kauten. In addition to Kauten and Corley, the four other officers listed on the foundation’s IRS forms were:

  —Grant Montgomery, the program director and highest paid official with The Family Care Foundation. He was the former “Prime Minister” and third-ranking leader of The Family.

  —Dr. Chris Mlot, the foundation treasurer and board member. She was a longtime member of the sect and shown on property records as the owner of one of The Family’s properties in the San Diego area.

  —Cheryl Brown, whose birth name is Kathleen Fowler. She was another longtime member of The Family and the registered domain owner of the sect’s
Web site, www.thefamily.org.

  —Kenneth L. Kelly, the brother of Peter Amsterdam, whose birth name is Steven Douglas Kelly. Kelly co-owns Family property with Mlot, and according to Penn, was closely tied to the sect and has several children with Mlot.

  Despite these deep connections, Family spokeswoman Claire Borowik insisted the sect “has no say or vote on the activities of The Family Care Foundation board.”4

  “There is no legal relationship between The Family and The Family Care Foundation,” said Borowik, although she conceded that the foundation “has under its umbrella many projects run by Family members.”

  Thompson, who left The Family shortly after Ricky’s departure, said the San Diego–based charity was always careful to conceal any link to The Family.

  Nevertheless, Thompson said the foundation does get legitimate donations from outside sources for rank-and-file members doing good work. “They are people who are just part of a messed-up system,” Thompson said. “They’ve helped a lot of people.”

  David Millikan, the new religion expert in Sydney, was willing to give The Family the benefit of the doubt. “In Australia they are finding it hard to define the nature of what they are doing. They are making a push into charitable works, which is a bit of a departure for them. They were setting up a ministry in prisons, and they were doing a good job. They are faithful people. Then one of the other prison chaplains got wind of who they were, and they got tossed out. They had been looking for something to give them a purpose in society and trying to gain respectability. It was quite devastating for them.”5

  At the same time, The Family Care Foundation has funded some of the more notorious members of The Family.

  Two members accused of sexual molestation in child custody cases in England and California in the 1990s went on to start charities funded by The Family Care Foundation. One of those cases is described in court documents filed in San Diego in connection with a 1998 custody case. They tell the story of a girl born into The Family International in 1981 and sexually abused from age five to sixteen.